This mother and son grave is probably the most distinctive grave at Christ Church, even more so than the Hardman grave with its ornate but broken gothic spire. This is the angel. Here we have a lady by the name of Christian Stephen. Yes, the name is Christian – really unusual! She was born on …
This post initially focuses on Jack Clegg, one of the subjects of our 2023 Holocaust Memorial Day tour. Following his story below we will return to the rest of his family – and don’t think it isn’t worth continuing to read, because we’re going to touch on a number of famous (occasionally infamous) figures. It …
Read more “4.2 – Ruth Harcourt, Samuel, Emily, Walter, Clara and Jack Clegg”
Another war grave, and a stirring tale of bravery in the face of the most pressing danger. Harriet Whitham was the tiny sister of Mary Eliza Whitham, later Gavaghan, and died in 1891 only two years old. Mary Eliza grew up as part of a large family, the daughter of Charles and Caroline (Kay) Whitham …
Read more “27.22 – Harriet Whitham, John, Charles, and Mary Eliza Gavaghan”
Samuel Rigg was a Tod lad, born and bred. He arrived in Tod in 1897 to proud dad Samuel, who was himself a Tod lad, and mum Harriet Fosbrook (a Mancunian but at least she got here in the end). He was the 3rd of 6 children. The first three were boys, and the rest …
This is the final resting place of Private Walter Hollis, a proper working class Tod lad, from a proper working class Tod family. He was born in 1897 at Gauxholme Fold, to Edmund Barker Hollis and Hannah Maria Stott and he was the youngest of their 7 children. In 1901, the family were living at …
This story is very common – high child mortality and a bereaved parent not able to carry on. Eleanor (Dawson) Hopkinson is in the burial register next to another suicide, Annie Marshall, who does not have a gravestone but whose story is told alongside Eleanor’s on our Facebook page. Frederick Hopkinson met Eleanor Dawson probably …
Read more “25.39 – Martha, Ada, Robert, Eleanor and Frederick Hopkinson”
This stone betrayed a small part of this story in the naming: Mary Ellen’s surname, specifically. William Hudson and Sarah Howorth married on September 29th 1860; Mary Ellen was born in September 1860, probably during the first or second week of the month as she was aged 13 weeks old at her death on December …
Read more “39.4 – Mary Ellen Howorth, Sarah and William Hudson, Alice, Percy, and Fred Marshall”
Roger (or Rodger) Craven was born in Todmorden in 1865, his parents were William Alfred Craven and Betty Pickles. He married Ada Ann Greenwood in 1891, the family lived on Eagle Street and by 1894 Roger and Ada Ann had two children : Ellen (born 1892), and William (born 1893). Roger was a loom tackler …
“Gone To Rest” “Rest after weariness. Sweet rest at last.” Those epitaphs are for the first two people buried here – Henrietta, who was only eight when she died, and her mother Emma. Thomas Richard Sparks and his wife Emma (maidenly Elston), were both originally from Devon. By 1873 they had moved to Todmorden, and …
Read more “25.32 – Henrietta, Emma, Thomas Richard and Thomas Newton Sparks”
Alice Greenwood, nee Bowden, and her husband Sam’s story is partly told alongside her sister Mary Bowden’s. Alice married late in life to Sam, a widower, and they moved to Oswestry to start new careers as publicans along with their aunt Hannah, their late father’s sister. Haidee was Sam’s first wife. Sam’s date of death …
Read more “V11.7 – Haidee Maria and Alice Greenwood, and Sarah Waterworth”